"The Internet winter is coming again! If we still do nothing like in 2000, the winter will be as cold as last time for at least three years!"
“So, in order to save the entire industry, we cannot step into the same pit twice! This time we have to create demand in advance even if there is no demand, and strive to shorten this cold winter period to two years, or even one year!
And this time it’s Wall Street that’s hurting us. It’s Wall Street that misinvested in other industries, causing the entire capital pool of technology stocks to shrink! This time it’s not Microsoft and Google that’s hurting Goldman Sachs, it’s Goldman Sachs that’s hurting us!”
As the subprime mortgage crisis in 2008 deepened, we had just turned the corner and entered 2009. The Internet circles of two major countries with different systems on both sides of the Pacific have all entered this mentality.
Everyone shouted, "We can't let history repeat itself, we can't step into the same pit," and then they preached that the "US$700 billion" and "four trillion" plans have been paid, and only by doing more things can we draw a better picture.
Only with more pie and more stories can we attract this huge amount of money to the technology sector.
What exactly is an Internet company? What counts as a technology company? It doesn’t seem to matter anymore. Just move any traditional business online, expand the scale, and chain it, it seems to be a big story.
It doesn't matter whether the story is driven by technology or a pseudo-demand driven by spending money without any technical content.
"In this battle, it seems that the vicious subsidies for selling goods at discounts like the 'Thousand Regiments War' will appear this year. Wang Shui's ugly group has been born, and so many other scammers who sell discounts and subsidies have also followed. This
At least it is a full year ahead of the same period in history.
Moreover, not only has the launch time been advanced, but the pace of the track's full rollout has also become faster. There is actually a food delivery software app now. Fortunately, there is no idea of subsidising it, but if bad winds blow, these races will
I don’t know whether Tao can withstand temptation.”
Gu Kun, who was in Lanfang, still remained concerned about the bad business trends in China and even Oceania, worrying about the country and the people. He could still clearly see the undercurrents ahead from the outside.
You read that right, he is concerned about this type of market, including "Oceania". It's not because he cares about Oceania, but because he knows that the Internet has no borders, and new methods of making mistakes are
If the people of Oceania invented this thing and got around it, it would spread to the whole world like a virus.
If Gu Kun only destroyed the ugly group Beep, but allowed the inferiors to survive and show off, the world would still be degraded.
To kill and subsidize the Internet bastards, we need a global game of chess.
In Gu Kun's case, Kalanick must end up like Iprasin and be ruined before this matter can be settled.
…
Everything was as Gu Kun expected. In the second half of 2009, the first shot of the subsidy war in the Chinese Internet circle was indeed provoked by Wang Shui and his competitors. The main battlefield was group buying discounts. All major platforms began to
They grab traffic for vanity and even sell goods at a price lower than the cost price, which greatly disrupts the market.
However, Gu Kun did not intervene immediately because at this stage, the other party was not aggressive enough and did not clearly violate the Anti-Monopoly Law and the Anti-Unfair Competition Law.
Because those group buying platforms do not have large capital support behind them and cannot afford to burn too much money, they only engage in some limited and ultra-low price "flash sale" sales.
This is not a large-scale operation, but some promotional activities. The legal nature is similar to the prize sales in the early years. As early as the 1990s, relevant laws and regulations in China stipulated that as long as the prize promotion is limited, the value of the prize is less than five
A single transaction of one thousand yuan is a legitimate marketing stunt.
Therefore, as long as they have not opened up to the point of "unlimited supply and dumping below cost price", it is not a crime. Gu Kun punished Wuming. He cherishes feathers so much and is always on the side of the law. Of course, he will not take action ahead of others.
, not taught but killed.
The sales-limited flash sale subsidy war lasted for the second and third quarters of mid-2009. By the fourth quarter, these platforms finally couldn't hold on any longer. Sooner or later, they would bleed to death if they continued to rely on their own funds to subsidize like this.
Start to lower your profile and crazily seek purely financial investments.
Of course, there were people here who came to see Gu Kun, but Gu Kun didn't want to be the initiator. He wanted to be the one who killed and shocked them in the end, so he rejected them all.
After the National Day holiday, the investor solicitors bypassed Gu Kun and went to Ali Baba’s Ma Feng. This is not surprising. In history, Wang Shui’s ugly group went to Ali Baba. Ma Feng
At that time, I couldn’t clearly see the field of group purchase subsidies, but I felt that it would be good for him to promote Alipay by others, so in addition to investing, I also sent Ali employee No. 67 Gan Jiawei to go undercover in the ugly group.
Historically, Ma Feng also went out of his way to stage a bitter plot, finding an excuse to remove Gan from Ahli first, and asking him to act like "running away in anger" to go to the Chou Tuan, so as to make it appear that Ah Li has nothing to do with the Chou Tuan, which is similar to a severe beating.
If Huang Gai asks him to demote Cao again, no matter what despicable business model Chou Tuan does in the future, it will not be Ah Li's fault.
It's a pity that Mr. Gan joined the ugly group and became the COO undercover, only one step behind CEO Wang Shui.
Once the undercover agent reaches the second-in-command position, it doesn't matter what the late master Sir's orders were.
However, this generation Ma Feng obviously paid more attention to the opinions of his former major shareholder Gu Kun, so when he received goodwill from those group buying companies, he still called and asked:
"Brother Gu, this is good for us. I know that those customers who come with discounts and subsidies are not real customers and have no loyalty. However, if it is not good for Chou Tuan, it does not mean it is not good for us, Ali. Nowadays, there are
The only competitive mobile payment tool is our Alipay app. No matter how they make payments, they have to use our payment method, so we can allow Alipay to continue to grow rapidly."
Ma Feng’s calculation is very clear: it is now 2009, and Ma Feng does not know that something called WeChat will be born in two years.
So in Ma Feng’s view, the only ones competing with Alipay now are QQ Wallet and Du Niang Wallet.
Moreover, Alipay in this generation is far more powerful than at the same time in history. QQ Wallet, Du Niang Wallet and even other more niche wallets similar to E-Pay (Ding Sanshi's), all products after the second place in these industries combined, use
The volume is less than 5% of Alipay’s.
In other words, more than 95% of the users in the industry are occupied by Alipay, which ranks first.
The larger the market for mobile payment, the greater the benefits for Alipay. Consumers have no loyalty to Chou Tuan, but they can form a reputation and habit towards Alipay, because the discounts are not committed by Alipay but Chou Tuan.
This is the same logic as the way taxi-hailing and food-delivery software were subsidized by money-consuming investment later in history.
Gu Kun's attitude towards this was: "If you want to invest a little, I don't care, but I hope you will be mentally prepared to lose all the equity you invested in Ugly Group in the future. In other words, you just invest the money."
Treat it as Alipay’s marketing and promotion fee, don’t expect the appreciation of Chou Tuan itself to bring you benefits.”
Ma Feng's heart trembled: "Brother Gu...are you treating people like expendables?"
Gu Kun: "My attitude remains unchanged. I embrace price reductions and concessions that benefit the people, but the premise is that you really advance in technology or management, sustainably lower costs, and sustainably increase social productivity.
However, if it is not the sustainable productivity growth brought about by scientific and technological progress and management progress, but a temporary scam brought about by capital subsidies, and the price will rise after the deception is over, I will kill someone even though I am far away -
—I don’t use off-market tricks, I just talk business. When one day they feel that they have occupied the market by killing all their competitors through dumping and want to raise prices again, I will create another one that can be destroyed at a low cost.
He defeated all his opponents."
"I know how to do it. I will treat the money as a one-time marketing expense and will not expect the investment itself to be repaid." Ma Feng is also very decisive and has thought about the use of tools and tool platforms.
…
In the following months, the subsidy war finally entered the stage of comprehensive subsidies with no sales restrictions. Legally speaking, it was dumping.
If a traditional company had done this, I'm afraid they would have been accused long ago and wouldn't even recognize them.
But since it is an Internet company and is relatively tolerant by regulators, it can use the kindness and goodwill of "give them more time to explore and observe new things that they cannot understand" to stir up trouble for a while.
The pros and cons of the same track have been repeatedly washed, and the number of Alipay users has skyrocketed to hundreds of millions every quarter, and the development speed far exceeds the same period in history.
Gu Kun watched for a while and felt that these people had poor imagination and were too slow in discovering new tracks, so he decided to give it a try himself and cultivate a group of dead warriors to inspire them——
He is very principled, and he will never invent subsidized playing methods. But once the subsidized playing methods are invented by other evil people, he can quickly transplant these playing methods to new tracks.
For example, some people invented the subsidy war in the field of group buying, and Gu Kun could quickly transplant it to areas such as food delivery and taxi-hailing, and even pretended to inspire others to engage in the sharing economy.
Of course, because history has changed, the order in which these things appear will no longer be the same.
For example, in history, food delivery software such as Not Hungry Me actually appeared in 2009, but it has been relatively quiet and developed in a small and beautiful way. It was originally a righteous company without subsidies, but it grew slowly, so it was the last to be affected by the subsidy war.
pollute.
As for taxi-hailing apps, they were not suitable for appearing at the end of 2009 or even 2010, because these things have relatively high requirements for the GPS positioning accuracy and penetration rate of mobile phones. Many early Android phones in 2009 did not have GPS modules.
(Food delivery does not have the impact of GPS. In the early days of No Hungry, users filled in the address themselves. The food delivery person could be found without a map. Even if there was a map, there was no real-time positioning. At the same time, early food delivery apps did not provide real-time rider locations.
The person who ordered the meal cannot see where his meal is delivered)
Other capitalists will certainly not initiate a war to "subsidize multiple tracks at the same time", because that will lead to dilution of funds, using up several years of wind at once, and the total valuation cultivated will not be as good as in batches.
The industry is well trained in different tracks——
Nasdaq only has so many IPO listing indicators every year. If multiple tracks are incubated together, it means that these companies will also be listed on Nasdaq in the future. Then the leeks that have been deceived on Nasdaq will not be scattered.
Isn’t it enough?
——
(ps: The editorial personnel of the website have been adjusted. I am very happy to be able to rewrite history without changing the editorial team. The book should be released next week. The next chapter is the finale. I will wait until the day when the new book is released to release the finale for convenience.
Please inform me. Please forgive me.
The website was adjusted, so it took some time. For those who don’t want to read history, there is nothing you can do. The main reason is that the contemporary background is not good and the plot is too realistic, and my IQ cannot be used. I am also taking advantage of my popularity in the urban area.
After the low period has passed, switch tracks.
To be honest, if it had been the time when Big 80 had just finished the book, I would definitely not have wanted to switch tracks, because at that time I still had a lot of existing popularity, and I also wanted to make use of the remaining heat. In fact, in these years,
I saved up a lot of ideas for writing history, but I couldn’t bear to do it because I’m not big enough in the city. This time I finally let go and let myself go.)